Of Course i’s Not The AS/400

The AS/400 was a great computer. No doubt about that. In the pantheon of business machines, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything that remotely compares to IBM’s long-lived midrange champion. But today’s IBM i on Power Systems platform has evolved far beyond the AS/400, and midrange professionals who cling to the old words and ways are doing us all a disservice. Are you one of them?

Chances are, you’re not. If you’re reading this article, you’re likely one of the “engaged” midrange professionals who takes an active interest in news, works to improve your skills, and embraces newer technologies available on the box. You get it, and you’re not part of the problem — but you may not necessarily be part of the solution, either.

Not to go all Trevor Perry on you (with apologies to Trevor Perry), but words do matter. What you call the platform matters. If you were to say that the IBM i server of today is “just” the AS/400, you’d be doing a huge disservice to the platform and the community that has grown up around it, even if you’re doing everything else (see: skills and tech) right.

The fact that the IBM i server is still around today is an anomaly. Out of all the midrange and mini-computer systems of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s – DEC VAX, HP3000, Wang VS, Data General MV, and yes, the AS/400 – the only platform that’s still kicking is the one that turned into the IBM i.

But the IBM i server is still around, and that is awesome. When you consider that technologists today have a veritable smorgasbord of stacks to choose form – open source server stacks, Web stacks, mobile stacks, programming stacks, database stacks, cloud stacks, and distributed-virtual-hyperconverged-exascale stacks – its continued existence is to be commended.

The fact that IBM has a 15-year roadmap for the IBM i platform also is awesome. That was definitely not supposed to happen. But it begs the question: With all those modern stacks available, why in the world would anybody choose the IBM i?

There are plenty of reasons why a business would continue to use the IBM i, but you probably already know about them: rock-solid stability, bullet-proof security, a powerful integrated database, support for modern languages, and unparalleled code-protection that lets RPG programs from the 1970s take full advantage of the huge performance gains that IBM has delivered with Power8 processors, solid state drives, huge addressable memory spaces, etc.

Yes, these are features that one could also attribute to the AS/400 compared to its predecessor systems, the System/36 and System/38 (well, except for the SSDs). But here’s the big difference: the AS/400 is dead. It had a great run, from 1988 to 2000, but was eventually superseded by the iSeries. The iSeries was superseded a few years later by the System i, which was superseded by Power Systems and IBM i in 2008.

IBM may have bollixed up the name game and sewn decades of confusion among its most dedicated installed base. But that’s no excuse, and it doesn’t change the fact that today’s IBM i server is a decidedly different beast than the AS/400 of old. Yes, it retains some of the capabilities of the AS/400, just as the AS/400 retained capabilities of the System/36 and System/38. But it also brings other capabilities to the table that were never in the AS/400 (yes, beyond SSDs)!

Nonetheless, the confusion continues to this day. It’s a topic that IBM i chief architect Steve Will plans to address this Thursday at 8 a.m. PT in a HelpSystems webinar titled “It’s Not Just AS/400.”

IBM stopped selling AS/400s in 2000.

Will elaborated on the idea behind the talk, and what he hopes others will get out of it. “It’s about a misconception that IBM i is ‘just’ the system that came out 29 years ago,” he tells IT Jungle. “The architecture of today’s IBM i operating system has some similarities to, and some underpinnings from, the AS/400. But, in terms of the architecture, this OS is far different from ‘just’ what was released in June 1988.”

Will – who took the reins of the chief architect job following the 2008 retirement of Frank Soltis, who has been called the “Father of the AS/400 – plans to cover the major stages of evolution from AS/400 V1R1 to today’s IBM i 7.3. He also plans to talk about “inciting incidents” – or “things that happened in IT, or in technology [that] caused major architectural changes/additions/enhancements” – within the context of IBM i.

“If you’ve started using the platform in the past decade or so, this session will teach you why things are ‘different’ on IBM i,” he says. “If you’ve been on the platform since ‘the beginning,’ it will provide a refresher, as well as teaching you about the key differentiators of today’s IBM i.”

IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will

If you’ve ever met Will, you will notice that he’s very much an optimist. As is typical for evangelists, Will prefers to concentrate on the positives rather than dwell on the negatives. That’s very much to Will’s credit, as he does his job admirably well.

But the very fact that Will feels compelled to clarify this point about the IBM i platform – of course it’s not the AS/400! – shows that there is more to this story.

Here are some hard truths that you probably won’t hear Will talk about:

IBM’s commitment to backward compatibility has bitten it in the bum by allowing customers to continue using very old platforms, technologies, and programming techniques that should have been retired or replaced years ago.

A good number of midrange professionals (not the ones that read this newsletter, of course!) have no interest in learning new technologies or programming techniques, and are simply biding their time before they retire or die.

The result of A plus B is an “AS/400 mentality” that breeds complacency and disrespect among the computing public.

The IBM i is a great platform, just as the AS/400 that came before it was a great platform. It’s great for many of the same reasons as the AS/400. They share many similarities, to be sure. But the IBM i platform has evolved far beyond what the AS/400 was ever capable of.

Midrange professionals who recognize this and who continue to invest in learning new technologies and skills are very well positioned to take advantage of this bounty of digital progress that IBM has delivered us on a silicon platter. But those who are content to sit on their laurels and coast along on the greatness that was yesterday’s AS/400 are doomed to find that the modern computing world has left them – far, far behind.

If you work with any of these old midrange dogs, help them take some meaningful steps forward. Learning new technologies or programming languages is never easy, but it’s likely easier than they think. You don’t have to teach them object-oriented PHP or J2EE – maybe start with HTML or JavaScript concepts, and gradually work up from there. They must recognize that while SEU worked in the old days, those days are long past, and RDi is the development tool they should use now.

Considering how important ongoing technological adaptation was to the original design concept of the AS/400 – which is something that the IBM i platform has inherited, and which distinguishes this platform from every other – continuing to do nothing contributes to the continued decline of the platform, and that doesn’t help anybody.

Will’s webinar is scheduled to start at 8 a.m. PT on Thursday. You can register here.

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15 thoughts on “Of Course i’s Not The AS/400”

Alex, I note that both you and Steve Will say “just” the AS/400. No one says “just” the AS/400 except people carrying on about IBM’s current name for the system. Everytime IBM changes the name they start carrying on again anew. Note that Windows and Linux and every computer technology in use has “evolved far beyond” what was before. There just are no other system names except from IBM. Very few, and I mean that literally, care about IBM and their marketing department naming schemes for the last great system in existence. So carry on. No one much cares about the silliness of it.

IBM must except a large portion of the blame for choosing “i” as the name. I was at the Common conference when IBM announced it and was immediately impressed by the fact that Googling “i” only seconds after the announcement garnered several million hits! Even now, if you want to find something related to the platform on Google, making “AS400” part of the search string will bring relevant results. There’s a reason why Blu-ray became the standard rather than HD DVD – it had a much cooler name.

An interesting view of the, err, “IBM i” world. What you don’t seem to have covered, however, is the class of user who understand the old, embrace the new, but are stymied on a regular basis because researching, for example, the vagaries of QShell’s implementation of the ‘sed’ command is a nearly impossible task thanks to IBM’s inability to pick a meaningful name that search engines can deal with. It was bad enough with the ignored ‘/’ in AS/400, but searching for ‘i’ is plainly a pointless task. THAT is why a lot of people still use “AS400” or “iSeries” when talking about today’s systems – they’re necessary parts of our daily lexicon.

My vote is for another name change very soon. I’d be perfectly happy with “Gruntwordle 9000.”

I have to say, this beating a dead horse is getting annoying at this point. Regardless… there is (in my view) this underlying misconception that “IBM i” is a good name and represents something that easily “falls off the tongue” (it does not), is well known (it is not) and the guy that owns the hardware store down the street (aka SMB) uses it in sentences, I doubt it.

“AS/400” was easier to communicate, but it doesn’t exsit so yes, stop using it. But what do we call this operating system and hardware system solution? What have our customer heard of?

Odds are if you say “IBM i” or as some insiders are now saying “i” the person you’re communicating with probably doesn’t know what you mean. Even the mainframes call it “z/OS” and rarely refer to it as “z”. Although even “z” has more context that “i”.

Using “i” or even “IBM i” is “doubling down” on a failed name. 10 years ago “i” was cool because Steve Jobs hijacked the letter from IBM and IBM did nothing. So the System i folks took it back by rebranded the operating system formerly known as CPF as “simply i” as they said in the announcement. That was probably a cool insiders review of the powerPoint pitch, but I can’t believe they did and brand studies. But I do not know.

Since that time, The Apple OS X has been renamed “macOS”, iOS is still “iOS” but is possibly being rebranded “phoneOS” and “watchOS”. In our midrange market today, we have “IBM i, what’s that?” as our product. My customers refer to it as “The IBM server” and some call it “power server”.

The launched “IBM i” as if it were a hardware/software (OS) solution, and it was, but have treated it as an operating system only as they try to sell off the Mfg infrastructure. When Power Mfg was sold, they should have rebranded the operating system to something that rolls off the tongue a bit easier.

Having these discussions and apparently Presentations/Sessions on “IBM i” diction is such a waste… except it does who me that IBM is going to continue to double down on this naming / branding flaw until the product it dead.

So, I suggest we call call it whatever makes us feel the least dumb while saying it to the people that matter, the people paying for the system.

I’ve just decided to refer to it as “IBM Indigo” (as in “Roy G Biv”) which actually engages the customers; they as “Ooo, what’s that?” “Indigo Servers are the most reliable and secure systems available…” Yep, that works for me.

I’m one of those people who still use the AS/400 label when it’s appropriate, as does IBM Global Services when it needs to fill particular positions. You’d be hard-pressed to search any good job board and not find at least one ad there from IBM Global Services with the AS/400 label in it.

It’s true that there are people out there, especially business users in small to medium sized companies, who don’t know the difference between the labels and what they stand for, but please don’t count IBM Global Services or myself among them.

Not too long ago i wrote an article explaining the differences to small IT Departments who had to market the platform to keep it in-house when either a competitor or new executive was arguing that their company should move to a new platform. The need for the article arose because there are very few, if any, resources being devoted by IBM to keeping the customers it already has. It’s leaving it up to the IT Depts themselves to do its marketing.

Here’s a link to the article I’m talking about – https://goo.gl/vo9548. Hopefully it will help IT Depts keep the platform at their company until they have the resources to upgrade. As they say, it’s far easier to win a customer than it is to win one back. (Hopefully this article will also convince you and others that not all of us who use the AS/400 label fail to realize the difference between the four evolutions of the platform – and when we use it we know exactly why we’re using it.)

Great article Alex, I think the tide is turning and the sea of IBM i Developers are slowly adopting the newer technologies and language capabilities, available in IBM i. For me, one of your paragraphs says it all — “The IBM i is a great platform, just as the AS/400 that came before it was a great platform. It’s great for many of the same reasons as the AS/400. They share many similarities, to be sure. But the IBM i platform has evolved far beyond what the AS/400 was ever capable of.” #goodstuff

“Words do matter” is 100% right and only 50% of the truth. The other half is that “Audiences do matter” too. The audience of people working in a small IT dept at a small company is not the same as the audience working in a large IT dept at a large company, nor is it the same as a small audience of users at a small company, a large audience of users at a large company, an audience of users at an old company with low turnover, an audience of users at a startup company, an audience of one CIO who’s worked there way up through the IT dept, an audience of one CIO who was hired fresh out of college, or an audience of one company who’s the company President and just wants to make cars, hats, or houses – not run an internal IT company. If you don’t know the characteristics of your audience you’ll probably end up giving the same speech every time, accidentally reaching the one audience its flavor matched up with.

Unfortunately, very few speakers in the IBM midrange world understand this.

My client runs a help desk. All the users refer to the As/400. Its in the lingo like hoover and durex. Why change it? Royal mail changed their name to consignia some time ago but changed it back pretty dammed quick. Changing a product name rarely makes more sales.

Do you recall the introduction of the AS/400? Alan Alda, Mike Farrell, Loretta Swit and other cast members of M*A*S*H were hawking the AS/400 in extensive series of television ads. It helped define a recognizable marquee for the IBM midrange offering. Can you recall a single such a marketing campaign since then, which specifically identifies an IBM midrange product? (Watson comes to mind, but then, that isn’t a midrange system, is it? I’ll take computers that play chess for $200, Alex.)

“IBM quit selling an AS/400 in 2000.” True statement. And they haven’t executed a single successful marketing plan to brand a midrange product since. So, when marketing fails, blame the target market for not understanding the terminology? Brilliant.

The 30th anniversary of the IBM mid-range (of too many names) would’ve been a great opportunity to rename the OS.

Instead, IBM is doubling-down on their branding mistake of what 10 years ago?

But to be fair, renaming would mean a colossal endeavor for IBM to go back and rename all their web site pages, documentation, etc. We should at least appreciate that, right? Sadly.

So the take-away is this: don’t be stupid with branding something from the very beginning.

The fact that this situation has filled IBM’s void of reason with a fervent Evangelist that Trevor Perry is, a man who preaches that gospel with hell and brimstone, and who dismisses those who insist in using “AS/400” name to eternal damnation is very telling to the depth of stupidity that IBM showed with the re-branding. By the way thanks for being that guy, Trevor.

This is not supposed to happen after a re-branding.

I use the name IBM i, but its awkward. Too much time explaining it to the masses.